It may seem a little incongruous that Smiley's current project, The Man Who Invented the Computer, is a biography of John Vincent Atanasoff, who began assembly of his desk-sized computer at Iowa State University in the late 1930s. But then you remember two things: one, that Smiley attended and taught at Iowa State for two decades, and that geek stories have every bit as much wonder and passion to them as King Lear ever did. [Wired; Photo credit: Alessandra Sanguinetti]